


Awaken to Woods

by Pearl_Pilots_In_Chains



Series: Of Tears and Ash [30]
Category: Hercules: The Legendary Journeys
Genre: Gen, dream - Freeform, world building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:55:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26151499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pearl_Pilots_In_Chains/pseuds/Pearl_Pilots_In_Chains
Summary: Ligeia finds herself in the midst of a forest without any memory of how she got there.
Series: Of Tears and Ash [30]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1050806
Kudos: 6





	Awaken to Woods

**Author's Note:**

> This is another one of my HTLJ fics from 2018 (set in my "Of Tears and Ash" AU) that I never posted, but decided I might as well, considering the time I put into them. Once again, since I'm no longer really in the fandom, I'm backdating this to when I wrote it, so no one thinks I'm suddenly back into HTLJ.
> 
> Timeline-wise, this occurs on the same night as "Enter the Hall" and "Blue Is the Hue."

Ligeia looked about in confusion, disoriented by the environment in which she found herself.She had no sense of how she had arrived in this particular place.The last memory which she was able to locate within the workings of her mind was that of laying down to sleep within her room at the inn in which Autolycus and she had decided to stay for the night.The landscape in which she had now arrived was one wholly separate from the one she had last observed with her waking eye.A quick examination of her surroundings brought her to the conclusion that she was now in a forest of sorts, though it was not a location which she could remember.All about her were the towering trunks of large trees, clearly ancient in nature, their bodies not unlike the pillars of some majestic temple, reaching up to the sky above beyond the extent of her vision to penetrate with ease.The forest was currently wrapped in the throes of the evening, darkness having descended like a diaphanous shroud to settle on all upon which it could find some amount of purchase, however slim that grip might happen to be.There was little light to be found along the forest floor, and the shadows had a thickness to them, as though they might be approaching tangibility, though they did not appear to have reached it quite yet.All the same, the locale was not completely void of illumination.A small amount of light from somewhere up in the celestial void percolated down between the leafy fronds which hung over her head, casting the stray ray of starshine here and there to provide some minor contrast to the otherwise relentless night.

All things considered, Ligeia decided that she did not particularly mind the nature of the space in which she had arrived.The night, though it might be a time fearsome in the eyes of many individuals, dangerous due to the unpredictability which they viewed as accompanying it, was not an unwelcome season to her eyes.The inverse was in fact true.She felt that it was more than merely a little likely that she actually preferred the night to the day, though she could not say this with absolute certitude, given that the day undoubtedly possessed certain traits which made it a favorable time as well, though for obviously different reasons than the night.However, what was an undeniable truth, was that Ligeia enjoyed being active at night.It was the ideal time to carry out much of the work associated with the trade which she practiced, as darkness was a good friend and merry companion to all manner of different roguish activities, whatever shape they might happen to take.Thus, the relationship between the hours of night and Ligeia could be characterized as nothing other than amicable.To attempt to cast it in a negative light would be a malicious action, perverting the evident truth, available easily enough to anyone who took the time to discover it.

Thus, it was this attitude that motivated Ligeia’s reaction to the atmosphere about her, prompting her gaze to move about it not with suspicion and concern heavy about its lancing arc, but rather, appraisal, and more than a little bit of curiosity.After a few moments of regarding the entire sweep of the wood about her with a careful eye, Ligeia made up her mind as to the next action she would take, and without any further delay, set off purposefully into the forest about her, having selected a direction at random, as every angle which she took in seemed to offer a similar terrain and path to traverse, which was to say, the lack thereof.Though she moved with an intentional pace, rather than that of one who was hesitant and uncertain of the direction in which one was going, or the objective toward which one was progressing, she still maintained a certain degree of caution in her motions, keeping a watchful view of her surroundings and remaining consistently aware, rather than bounding forward pridefully, like a fool who was overly confident in her trajectory, to the extent that it became her eventual undoing and let to a humiliating mistake.Ligeia believed that striking a delicate balance between contrasting spheres of perspective and action was the best way to tread a successful path through life, and this was a principle which she carried with her through the various avenues she wandered, regardless of the shape they might take.In this specific case, she was moderately convinced that she was striding through the folds of a dreamscape and nothing more, but she still felt as though it was prudent to exercise a temperate amount of discretion, taking into account the possibility, however slim it might appear to be to the logic of her mind, that the environment through which she walked was something more than the mere figment of her unconscious mind.

For a time as she went through the woods, nothing stood out to Ligeia as worthy of interest or any further study.The landscape was homogenous to the extent of being dull, apparently repetitive to a fault.There was little, if any, deviation among the foliage, with similar patterns playing out time and time again as she progressed.This created the illusion that she was merely going in a circle or something of the sort, but the movements of her body conflicted with this, as her depth perception and spatial awareness told her that she was still moving in a relatively straight line, toward an indeterminate point somewhere before her.

Gradually, Ligeia began to note something ahead of her that stood out from the otherwise unremarkable three-dimensional tapestry of the forest.Somewhere off in the distance, though exactly how far it was she couldn’t tell, a bundle of blue light flickered among the trees, looking almost as if someone had built a campfire out of some strange material that emitted blue flame.It was a bizarre sight to behold, but Ligeia found that it intrigued her.She set her mind to getting a closer look at the source of this light, and quickened her pace accordingly, now moving at a healthy clip through the woods, though she was carefully to temper her speed enough that it did not cross the threshold from expeditious over into reckless.As she moved toward it, it seemed to her that the light began to grow in size, to an extent even greater than she had expected it to grow.Though it was only logical for something to appear larger the closer one got to it, this light seemed to be growing exponentially, despite the fact that she did not feel as though she had gotten much closer to it than she had been when she first caught sight of it.It seemed very possible to her that the light was in fact moving toward her now, just as she was moving toward it.In addition, though she had at first thought she detected some amount of flickering in the light, as though it belonged to a campfire, the light now lacked all such definition, and was merely a glorious radiance among the woods, shedding its azure hue over all that it touched.

Suddenly, the light seemed to explode outward, far faster than before, now uncontestably moving toward her.Reflexively, Ligeia raised a hand to shield her eyes as it approached, bathing the woods about her as blue as the afternoon sky itself.Her eyes clamped tight shut, and she could feel a brightness against them, even through the barriers of her eyelids and hand alike.For a short span of time, perhaps no more than a second or two, she felt a comforting warmth all about her, as if she was encompassed within the creases of a substantial blanket, sitting by a blazing hearth on a cold winter’s evening.Then, just as quickly as the sensation had come, it was gone.Ligeia could now feel the texture of a cot beneath her, and she was no longer on her feet, but rather, lying on her side.Peeling her eyes open gently, and dropping her hand away, she found herself back within her inn room, her bed beneath her, everything about her identical to the features present in her last memory before she found herself in the forest.Furrowing her brow, she rolled over onto her back, and stared up at the ceiling, uncertain what had just happened, but her interest piqued by it all the same.


End file.
